Hunter Valentine

I’d like to think that girl bands have gotten past the raunchy rock’n’roll, "let’s rock out!, woo” stigma. I’d like to think solely female bands can make a classy, educated contribution to the current landscape of rock music but time and time again, a record like Hunter Valentine’s The Impatient Romantic shows up and proves I am a wishful thinker. It’s a bit embarrassing to say the least, as bands like the Like and soloists such as Amy Millan and Feist have taken grand steps away from the girl rock’n’roll the Donnas made popular in the ’90s. But some girls just don’t get it. These Torontonians are back-pedalling so fast they’ve run out of redeeming qualities. Like the Flairs before them, Canada’s alt-rock fans may grant Hunter Valentine some short-lived hype before the accessible tracks bore. "Typical” is a fitting name for such a simple rock’n’roll cut despite its supposedly ironic intentions (the song starts off saying, "lets not be typical”) and "The Problem With Devotion” shows Kiyoni McCloskey snarling like she’s doing a drunk Dave Grohl karaoke attempt, and she doesn’t let up for the whole album. That’s as raunchy as it gets and it is completely run of the mill. It quite frankly, makes me want to march over to these three rock stars, slap them upside the head and say, "stop trying to prove you can rock out and start writing some actual music.”

(True North, www.truenorthrecords.com)